Vietnam with the Dowlers: February 2014

Since at TET time everyone has holidays it seemed the right thing to do to go somewhere for a few days. We decided on Hong Kong as Phil had never been there and it had been around 30 years since I was last there, things could have changed a bit?

Below is the skyline at dusk and to the right the statue at the Avenue of Stars, a little like the Los Angeles place in the US where the stars have their names on the boardwalk. It was a nice spot to be as the lights for the evening came up.

Me being in a movie...or pretending to be anyway.

The Bruce Lee statue

Great shot of the junk (Chinese sailing boat) going around the harbour at twilight.

Hong Kong by night along the promenade....still getting the hang of the camera.

We also went on a cruise around the harbour the first night. The next day we headed up to the Peak to view the city. It's only good on a clear day and we were very lucky that day.

And a coffee with a view

Tourist shot

This is the Peak Tram that you go up and down the hill on, it's on a really steep angle.

On the way down we saw how you have to do cemetery's in Hong Kong, of course it's almost all hill with no space.

In the afternoon we took the Ding Dong tram out to Stanley, just like the trams in Melbourne.

Sitting out at Stanley was a little like Airlie Beach, very relaxed with seaside restaurants, really liked it.

The waterfront area at Stanley

The pagoda at Stanley

The train system is very good and cheap so we caught the train most places during our stay.

This was something we found unusual. There are around 300,000 maids from other parts of Asia living and working in Hong Kong. On their days off obviously they want to get together with the friends from their own country that possibly they came over to Hong Kong with. We saw lots of spaces like this set up with cardboard boxes where groups of maids got together and hung out on their days off. I gather this group was waiting for the rest of their friends, we were there very early in the day.We literally saw hundreds around the place, I gather due to the holidays with the Lunar New year. They had picnic food, were doing manicures and generally just hanging or should I say lying around enjoying each others company.

The famous clock tower, one of the original architecture pieces from the old days.

And Phil found the largest block of chocolate he could eat?

Yum Cha breakfast we HAD to have while in Hong Kong...again yummy!

We caught the ferry over to Macau Island on Day 3, it was more like a plane, very smooth and fast, and took just 1 hour.

I imagined it would be a place of casinos and that was all, we were pleasantly surprised!

Yes there were Casinos but there is also a lovely old city area in Portugeuse style, I thought we were in Europe!

There were cobbled streets in Senado Square and surrounding areas, see below....

Beautiful Architecture like the ruins of St Pauls below

And St Josephs Seminary and Church below

And inside that church the confessional that Phil's Dad told him was the place if he was bad he would fall directly into hell from....don't know where Phil gets it from?

Of course Maccas had to squeeze in there as well :)

Some of the food they are famous for is the beef jerky, below and the following picture the Egg tarts which are to die for...my favourite thing....we found a Macau restaurant at the back of our hotel in Hong Kong and ate them all the time. Diet time now!

And this fish mornay thing in a cob loaf seemed unsual too but tasty.

It was Lunar New Year of course and everyone had to visit the pagoda to pray and we called into one of Macau below.

A close up of the decoration on the tree

Letting off firecrackers is also a way to make things good in the new year. You can see the top of the picture is the start of 1 row of fireworks which snakes down and is still going wrapped around the wooden railing below. So many crackers!

This is while they were going off...very noisy!

Everyone was there giving offerings and burning incense.

These are incense rings burning below

Believe it or not that is just 1 incense stick it is around 10 feet tall and 10 inches thick...soooo big!

We did a tour around the city on the Pedicab which was relaxing, we had run out of puff for walking.

Back to Hong Kong and our lovely hotel room, really liked it, tiny but arty.

We headed the next day to Mong Kok to see the markets there, of course forgetting that we see markets all the time it wasn't anything different for us. It was crazy busy can I say though because of the new year I believe.

Our favourite during our stay...Milk Tea and an Egg Tart!

We really enjoyed our stay in Hong Kong and there were lots of things we didn't do we can keep for our next visit.

So TET truly got started when the Caravelle Hotel had it's annual staff party for the New Year on the 16th of January. Preparations start well before the date with gifts being gathered and wrapped and decorations and the theme being organised. This year was a sailing theme. All staff get to go in a draw for some amazing prizes including the main prize of a motorbike.

Below with the captain of the HR deck of the Caravelle Hotel, Mr Dat. I have most of my dealings with him as he takes care of the HR dept and training. He is just lovely as are all of the staff at the Caravelle.

There are performances once again by the staff and there are a couple of pictures below of their part of the show.

This includes a fashion parade with outfits made of flowers and leaves...the part that Phil liked the most, as did the judges, they won a prize of course.

At the end of the night the boys, with a little too much alcohol under their belts finished the night off with some singing.

Everyone has to have some flowers or fruit trees for their house for TET so opposite our house in the park there were flowers and fruit trees for sale everywhere!

A couple of the flower sellers in the park.

Everyone sets up camp to look after their stock of trees for sale.

Pic with my new camera!

Trees that look like dragons?

Happy Plants that are trained to grow around in a cylinder.

Bonsai trees and sunflowers below.

I thought this shot below was particularly Vietnamese with the hat.

The main area of town was once again decorated even more than Christmas if that was possible. There is a flower display that takes up around 5 blocks covering 4 lanes of traffic area that is closed off for the display. Everyone goes into town to get their pictures taken, we did that as well of course! On the night we went there were literally thousands of people...it was so busy.